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Building an MP3/DVD Box for the Home Audio System? 22

Posted by Cliff
from the as-the-computer-infiltrates-the-stereo-cabinet dept.
_typo asks: "I was thinking about building a nice MP3/VCD/DVD playing box for my home. Such box would stack along with the rest of the home entertainement equipment. I need suggestions about the case to use, the hardware to put in it and the software to drive it." This is similar to the Ask Slashdot on Home Theater Systems, but this approaches the issue from a different angle, that of building your own device to run the DVD/VCD/MP3 aspect of your mega-stereo system. Off the shelf products can do this decently well, especially with DVDs and VCDs, however about the best player of MP3s in existance, aside from the portables, is your average home computer. DVD/MP3 combos will play some MP3s fairly well, but even the best ones have problems with certain MP3s that will play well enough on a machine with a decent MP3 player.

" There's a few problems I need to solve to be able to do this.

First is the case to put the harware on. I've been looking for a case that's roughly the height and width of a 1U or 2U rackmount case but just 13'' or 14'' deep. It should have room for a standard motherboard, a hard drive, a DVD-ROM, and a front-mounted LCD.

To put inside this case I'd need a motherboard with Ethernet 10/100 and video-out included (to have less boards hanging around), and a reasonably good soundcard. As for CPU and memory, anything should do if it doesn't generate too much heat. This setup shouldn't need a fan, to avoid noise in the room.

To interface to the thing I'd like to have a wireless keyboard of some kind with a trackball and a IR remote interface. For the IR remote I think I can use lirc's plans to build a small IR receiver but I would still need to find a way to mount such receiver on the front of the case.

To drive all this I'd need proper software. Linux and X are the base options I'm most confortable with, but I still need the software to browse and play my MP3 collection and playback my dvd's (OMS?). Doing some Web browsing would be nice too but that seams easy enough to do with any regular linux browser.

Finaly I would like it to be cheap to build. Any help will be appreciated."
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Building an MP3/DVD Box for the Home Audio System?

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